Julia Roberts

Research Topics:

Early Canada’s Society and Culture, Colonial Publics, Taverns, Drink and Drinkers, Colonial Foodways, The War of 1812, Colonial Identity Politics

Present Research:

My new project is called, for now, Repositioning the War of 1812: The Cultural Politics of War in a Colonial Society. The War of 1812 is an iconic war in Canadian historiography because it birthed a nation, but a nation for whom? In this project, as in my earlier work on colonial public space, I am interested in how the many and mixed peoples of colonial Canada belonged to their society and shaped it. The War impelled individuals and groups who were made unequal by what race, gender, and class could mean in colonial contexts to articulate powerful claims to public membership – claims that challenge what historians think they know about 1812.

Additionally, I maintain an on-going fascination with colonial foodways and the culture of food. I am participating in a scholarly team project entitled Edible Histories: Toward a Canadian Food History

Representative Publications:

In Mixed Company: Taverns and Public Life in Upper Canada (University of British Columbia Press 2009)